


What Comes After

by SkinIsCrawling



Category: Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, Flashbacks, Light Angst, M/M, Oral Sex, Post-Canon, Rimming, deaths of tiny minor ocs, explicit rating is only for chapter 2, i will go down with my weird ship, let lacroix survive even though he doesnt deserve it 2k19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-07-30 09:07:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20094784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkinIsCrawling/pseuds/SkinIsCrawling
Summary: LaCroix opens the sarcophagus, and there is only one willing to drag him from the fate he has carved out for himself.(can be read as a follow up to my other fic dominus. doesn't have to be)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i never read kindred of the ebony kingdom and so sorry about any stuff that is probably wrong!

A storm was gripping Venture Tower. 

Blood sprayed upon concrete deep within its bowels, bullet and blade slicing through a mountain of flesh as a mere fledgling, caught in blind, hideous rampage, gutted the fortress from the inside. LaCroix glimpsed, through the dim eyes of a kine, the face of the murderer, devoid of righteous fury or vengeful indignation. Only a cold, dead determination lay within.

He should never have been allowed existence.

One more strike, and the body LaCroix was possessing held no longer - it became another ragdoll thrown to the pile within this merciless onslaught. Far above, the Ventrue's eyes snapped open as he flinched in phantom pain, forced back beneath the glaring lights of his haven above the city. For a moment, the silence was a shock compared to the screams of gunfire mere moments ago. But then he heard the booming din from somewhere below... accompanying the distant cries of the dying. His chandelier shook, casting the light to dance, flamelike, upon his walls.

He closed his eyes to permeate some other mortal's body, to fling their weak, warm hands at the fledgling's throat and burn them both, well-prepared to die a thousand deaths if it meant seeing the light fade from the ingrate's eyes. However, as he called his vitae, he found his body faltering, nearly tipping as he steadied himself with a hand upon his desk. Thirst ripped through his core, up to his throat, as the beast's claws scraped the inside of his skull. The feverish dizziness deluged his mind and urged him to feed, _now_, but he could not - every ounce of mortal flesh was vital for destroying the encroaching fiend, and his last blood pack lay long drained and dry.

His more impulsive instincts told him to flee, to slip away to sanctuary and nourishment before the inevitable tide of bloodshed could crawl its way upwards and rear before him. He had always noticed, with that fledgling, the creeping dread that lurked sullenly behind him, and he cursed himself for not having _listened_ to it. Now here he stood, trapped to await death at the hands of this abomination in a child's cloak. 

But of course, before he could slip through his office doors, he found himself instead edging towards the sarcophagus, its strange allure silencing even the hunger thrumming through his mind. He could feel its current waiting to be unleashed - a current that would not be his to ride upon if he abandoned it now.

LaCroix pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing sharply. He needed only to let the neonatal snake come with key in hand, and to force one final act of compliance with what little strength remained in his body. Then, all of this would be done with - this fog would lift from his eyes, this sword of Damocles would snap clean in two by the might of his own hand, and all who had clawed at his ankles would be damned in the forging of a new empire.

In his mind, he saw no reason for trepidation - yet in his stomach, he felt the pit grow ever-wider.

Minutes passed as hours with the very air pulling down at him, with hunger and whispered horror racing in tandem through his veins. All went quiet, soon. He found himself staring at the doors with wide eyes, twitching when he thought he heard them open, dreading the inescapable moment as much as he loathed the purgatory of waiting. Yet, it was all too soon that his last bastion was breached. Acrid air smelling of death rushed through his office, chilling his body, so he raised his chin to meet his fate - to end this little game for good.

His Sheriff strode towards him, and LaCroix could hardly stifle his gasp of elated disbelief.

Bright blood was drying upon his bare chest, matting down his snarled fur and glistening upon the sinew. He walked towards him with his head ever so slightly bowed in respect, as always, but the slight pull of his lip betrayed something more feral, as did the pleased gleam in his eye. His heavy footsteps cut through the infernal silence, resounding as an odd comfort to LaCroix's sore mind. He rushed to greet him, his knight so red in tooth and claw - what a fool he had been to ever doubt his strength! With a gnarled hand, the Nagloper presented him with a skull, ash-blackened, with one brow splintered around what must have been an agonising final blow. LaCroix felt his lips twitch upwards, a giddy relief washing over him - _he_ had ended with his face impaled upon his Sheriff's sword, and was now nothing more than a bloodstain upon his body.

"The key," demanded LaCroix as the giddiness soon gave way to impatience, "did you retrieve the key?" The craving tugging in his throat and sapping away his strength reminded him of a rather more pressing issue than some rogue child.

The Nagloper tilted his head upwards - was that hesitance that he saw in his slow fingers, uncertainty within his eyes? For a moment, it all flared back - the frustration, the dread, the rage - before he saw him raise his other claw. What he held was only a little cylinder, unremarkable save for the slight strangeness radiating from its surface - that was it. It had to be. LaCroix snatched it from the Sheriff's hands, clasping at its unexpectedly heavy weight until his fingernails ached.

"Wonderful," was all that he could breathe. "I should never have expected otherwise."

His body felt lighter as he approached the sarcophagus, wrapped in both the mania of ambition and the frenzy of all-consuming emptiness. And how better to sate himself, than the forbidden fruit of Amaranth? He could not help the grin creeping upon his face - he had heard that the pleasure was immeasurable, like being embraced anew. His far future had become a brilliant lodestar, but now, he wanted only the immediate - to devour. The key fit into the lid with a satisfying smoothness, ancient mechanisms clicking softly beneath his fingers.

"_Back!_" he hissed when the Sheriff shuffled closer to his sarcophagus. His chest twinged with a harsh tightness, and his fingers bordered upon trembling in joy as the weight of the lid eased enough for him to slide it aside. He had found himself imagining, over the course of this madness, what his reward might look like. Unwittingly, he had dreamt a half-complete glimpse of an image, of a regal man blazoned in the ornaments of a bygone world; an old and sleeping god whose power was his to make new. As it fell from the vessel, the lid thudded upon the floor with a resounding finality.

However, it was no slumbering emperor that awaited him, no Antediluvian or Methuselah. What awaited was a sprawl of wires and the biting smell of chemicals - he did not quite understand for a moment, as his world had halted to utter stillness. When the soft chirp of a timer broke his daze, the realisation fell with colossal, crashing weight - the realisation that he was looking at a bomb.

The hunger burned onwards, undeterred, through his body, and the weakness of his limbs did not abate, self-preservation dwindling to little more than a dim echo in the back of his mind. With strength diminished and willpower absent, LaCroix only clung to the edge of the sarcophagus, and stared at the fruits of his painful, toiling labour. He had never given much thought, he realised with an icy chill, as to what death might feel like for a second time. He had never believed he would have reason to.

The sound of two heavy footfalls was the only warning he received before he was knocked from his feet by a great impact, his listless form powerless to resist. He closed his eyes before he would have to watch tendrils of flame char him to nothingness - but then, he recognised the roughness of the arms holding him in a tight grip, the prick of clawed fingers, as the Sheriff effortlessly tackled him into a frantic rush. The bursting of glass sung suddenly around his ears, shards lacerating his skin before nothing but the night winds whipped his face. He heard the horns of cars, distant shouting, a brief flap of leathery wings - it all tangled together into a blind, churning cacophony.

A forceful pain tore into LaCroix's spine as he was hurtled through the grand window of the skyscraper opposite, body pushed past even its vampiric limits when it smacked upon a hard floor. The Sheriff released his iron grip upon him when they had skidded to a halt, leaving him to lay in a bed of broken glass - near immobile with starving agony, he fought to pry his eyes open and slowly, shakily raise himself to his elbows. He had just enough time to watch all unravel before him.

With a grand explosion resounding deeply through the gloom of the evening, he saw Venture Tower burst vividly into flames.

He recognised, distantly, what he ought have felt at the sight - indignation, gripping fear, perhaps weeping regret... yet it was all so very surreal, so dreamlike, that it simply washed over him. The destruction of his kingdom hardly even touched his reality, which was far more concerned with the black spots dancing across his vision as the beast and torpor dragged at him with equal force. His throat, his veins, and his soul all _sung_ for blood, but upon trying to move, the stabbing shots of pain through his body returned with ravaging intensity to the leg upon which he had harshly landed. A shard of his own bone stuck from his knee, his few precious final droplets of vitae trickling slowly from the ragged tear. His stomach knotted at the sight - it must have been his Sheriff supporting his failing frame as he slumped backwards. Was this how all of this was to end, then? Carried from this mess like an invalid, before he slipped away into torpor, everything that he once was withered to near nonexistence?

The large hand steadying his body felt warm, somehow, pumping with potent vitae next to his own drained corpse. An alternative presented itself to him - an alternative that the hissing beast within him would allow him to neither reflect nor hesitate on. It wished only to taste blood upon its tongue, and to restore wholeness to its body.

"Your wrist. Now," he attempted to demand, in a voice so strained and weak; a voice that was obeyed regardless.

The stench of that fledgling still lingered on the Nagloper's skin, a bitter foulness worming tauntingly into his mind. But now was not the time to waste thought upon the dead - LaCroix brushed his fangs against the thick arm presented to him, puncturing into the toughened skin.

The Sheriff's vitae was far more viscous than any other he had tasted, rather more like bittersweet black tar than blood as it burrowed through his body. He clamped his jaw around him greedily, the thick fluid sticking to his teeth and expelling the haze from his mind, dulling the pain of his body - though what came after was more of an empty silence than a return to clarity. If he had lost everything, then nothing mattered, and all he needed to concern himself with was the base satisfaction of blood rushing down his gullet. What a sickening, pathetic liberation.

The abandoned office into which they had landed was cast into a warm glow by the lofty, distant inferno as LaCroix withdrew his fangs, sated upon only a few mouthfuls of his vitae. He turned to look at the Nagloper as he withdrew his arm, and saw his eyes were fixed upon him with an enraptured intensity - they often were, but it had been some time since he had seen the furrow of his brow, the very human concern etched into his monstrous features. But perhaps it was simply an illusion, brought on by the soft illumination of the amber light. 

This man had already slain a threat he'd thought nigh-unstoppable on this night, and now, he had pulled him from hellfire.

He looked away. Such observations were hardly worth the time it took to make them- of course he had acted to preserve LaCroix's existence, for that was the role that he had been ordained. But he sat still, passing just a few moments more in his protective embrace, as he set his leg back into place with a sharp hiss and plucked a shard of glass from where it was embedded in his cheek.

As his flesh knit, vitae restoring his body and mind, lucidity crept back like a sickness, his thoughts livening and reality unfolding dreadfully before him. He had noticed the undeniable slipping of his grasp, but the sheer _extent_ of it suddenly became all too clear. 

If he could even still be considered Prince, he doubted that such would be the case by next sundown with his wavering-at-best support from both the council and the crowd. Strauss had begun to actively move against him, he knew - the fledgling had favoured him enough for LaCroix to suspect that his actions this evening had been an organised attack on the Tremere's part, and he imagined that many more would come. He had dismissed him as no threat beneath Antediluvian might. He clenched his fists, grasping at nothing... how could he have been so _foolish_? 

Sparks of the red fear ignited in his veins as his vision cleared, the blazing tower growing too bright to look upon. His eyes darted to the floor, to the bloody glass glittering in the fire's light. Would his actions be grounds for a bloodhunt? Did it even matter, given that he would likely be granted one regardless? He could almost laugh at it all... at the fact that he doubted there was a single Kindred within this city who would not like to see his head roll, and each with their own plentiful bounty of reasons! He allowed himself a deep, steadying breath within his stale lungs. He still had contacts in New York, to which he could flee if he moved quickly. London, too, remained an option. Or perhaps he should simply return to Pas-De-Calais, and-

And rot meaninglessly within his estate, his list of failed endeavours and domains trailing behind him, cowering beneath a blanket of obscurity before he inevitably met his fate slain by some diablerist or hunter and completed his journey to the void.

How long had LaCroix fought this forsaken city with every inch of his strength, and now he was allowing it to destroy him, to remake him into something so weak? He brushed the Sheriff's arm away and stumbled to stand, a dull ache and stiffness in his leg as dry vitae flaked from his mended skin. Then, stalking towards the shattered window, he glanced into the sodden streets below.

The smell of smoke was the first thing that he noticed, choking his senses even from such a distance. A mob gathered like maggots on a carcass, even as kine authorities tried to usher the drunken and curious away from his downfall. Invisibility was an oddly welcome sensation, with all eyes for once not upon him as he scanned the crowd - he recognised several Kindred, most of them Brujah, some with faces twisted in raucous laughter. He wondered, might the building crumble under its own weight, crushing them beneath steel and stone? He continued to skim over the crowd until he was caught, suddenly, by one not transfixed with the flames.

The pale eyes of an unfamiliar man in dark clothes glowered over the top of shaded spectacles, his head tilted in probing curiosity as he stared straight at LaCroix even from so far below. His arresting gaze sent a bolt piercing his heart that spread a deep, primal fear through his blood. The roar of the city was suddenly deafening, the towers looming much higher down here than they ever had in his office - he pulled from the din, back into the shadows and away from the unexpected dread of something terrible, and unknowable.

A large hand grasped his shoulder, spiking that sense of paranoia as he whipped his head around. But it was, of course, his Sheriff - only his Sheriff. His presence was a constant against the changing, swirling storm, the one rock that he could cling to - he looked the same as he ever had, body unbroken by their fall. The expectant manner in which he looked at him told LaCroix that it was time, once more, to lead just as he had been created to, yet he felt... such fatigue.

"We must move," he said, loud enough to rid his voice of any shakes, "and quickly. Else we may be tracked. This is nothing but a momentary setback, for I will _not_ be terrorised from my own city - your role will remain the same." He grit his teeth, willing his resolute determination to return. "I am not finished here."

And that was correct, wasn't it? He had dealt with rivalry before, he had survived assassination attempts far more cunning. This was not the end, or an _excuse_ to give up as some other weak creature might have. He looked to the Nagloper, to read his face once more, but saw he had fallen back to his practised stoicism.

"You may speak," he said.

He blinked, unsure, betraying if only for a moment that which lay beneath the surface once more. But he opened his mouth after a moment and spoke, in that voice LaCroix had not heard for many years. "I... will follow."

The reply was _fine_, rehearsed, exactly what he expected to hear at this point. He did not keep his company for the sake of conversation, after all. His jaw clenched as he stared up at the much larger vampire, who cast his eyes down to his feet, his strength seeming suddenly much less resolute with such an action.

"Of course you will," spat LaCroix. He spared neither the fire nor his blood slave another glance as he turned away. Tempting though it was to remain in the dark and muted space of the office, this storm would not be weathered. The Nagloper did, true to his word, follow him into its waters.  
  
  
\----  
  
  
LaCroix had been 71 years of age when he stepped foot on the soils of the Côte d'Ivoire, in the dusk years of the 19th Century. The soot-blackened sprawl of London held his interest no longer, laden as it was with impregnable hierarchies and hunter-infested corners; he could not allow his true potential to be stifled beneath its weight. And where better to start afresh than a world near-virginal, save for the kine of his motherland carving out their legacies? He had thought he might conquer alongside the living, stake his claims into a beautiful, alien country that lay all too ready to be made his own. 

He had been... somewhat mistaken.

Many bright-eyed Kindred had shared his dream, and sought their future upon the planes of Africa - mostly of his own clan, too, if only to make the entire situation that little bit more treacherous. None of them had expected to be greeted with scores of the Laibon, distant relations of the European clans he recognised, organised into structures traditional enough to be unwelcoming yet civilised enough to stand firm against invading strength. Their societies placed great reverence upon age and heritage, which was most unfortunate for LaCroix, a Ventrue standing upon the awkward bridge between neonate and ancilla. His unlife was, once more, a series of bargains and favours in a tangled web of unimpressed elders, where exactly who was serving whom was unknowable to all.

Such machinations were what led him into the humid, choking heart of the land's forests, some distance from the comfortable-if-quaint trade post in which he had nested himself. All to win the favour of a - Guruhi, was it? - whose good graces had been tipping rather far in the direction of one of his competitors. The jungles screeched with an incessant, discordant buzz, the mud was not fit to touch his boots, and LaCroix strongly suspected that his 'task' here was simply a half-disguised murder attempt. However, with so few resources to his name in a situation far more precarious than he had anticipated, any boon to his reputation was a most alluring notion.

The whispers that he had been set chasing down this rugged trail were foul indeed - rumours of a creature of nightmares, of terrible screams drowned out by the forest canopy and mangled things snatching away unfortunate souls in the night. _A horror_, cried the kine, _a Nagloper_, hissed the Kindred. _A pest_, spat the Guruhi Magaji who had sent him here.

The forest seemed to quieten as his steps continued along the path, the sound of life giving way to the rumble of thunder. An odd smell, too, repellent and unnatural, bled into the air as the trees grew withered. Ashen bark and skeletal branches parted until, but a stone's throw from himself, he saw the shadow of an archway loom, jutting from the ground like a jagged maw.

He cast aside the shiver climbing his spine.

LaCroix did, of course, know of the reputation that the Tzimisce and their offshoots had begotten, but he also knew that fear was no more than another means of manipulation. Even the most gruesome of monsters could be forced to sheathe their fangs, if pushed _just_ right - and after that, they burned easily enough, caught defenceless beneath flintlock and brimstone.

Flies swarmed the entrance of the tainted haven, the once-faint odour mounting to a noxious stench of bloated, rotting flesh. A clearing lay beyond the twisted gates, separated from the outside world by a fence that, if he were to give his best guess, had been constructed from fluid-stained skin, stretched taut over a sharp and spindled frame. _How distastefully macabre._

He crossed the haven's threshold with slow, even strides.

The dead leaves upon the ground of the den cracked beneath his soles as he entered the unexpectedly small clearing, encircled by the ghoulish fence - he had not been able to see, from the outside, the hooks and poles that protruded from it, skewering incipient bodies and vestigial appendages that still shivered with an imitation of life. They cowered from the sound of his footsteps as much as any slithering, formless mass could, and though he had braced himself for repugnance, LaCroix cringed at the sight. An older, wiser vampire might have turned around without hesitance, but the Ventrue possessed something that made him as much a danger to himself as others - a burning confidence in his own abilities.

He quickly averted his gaze from the odious display, to the centre of the den.

A scattering of stone tables, laid with similarly mutilated flesh and tools that he did not recognise, sat bared to the stars save for a few thin roofs of that same dubious leather. LaCroix wondered where the beast slept - whether this was its true haven or merely a grotesque workshop - until he noticed the gaping pit, and the mound of soil beside it. His nose wrinkled.

A wet, squelching slap shattered the stagnation of the air.

LaCroix snapped his head and saw, in one of the far corners stood in half-shadow, the creature all had spoken of, slamming a writhing body upon his table as a butcher might. His body, standing twice as tall as any other man's, radiated goliathan power; his chest might have exceeded that of a warhorse, baring thick patches of pelt upon plentiful ridges of musculature, running down the thick columns of his arms, which tapered to vicious claws. His hair, twisted into thick locks, fell loosely about his face as he hunched over the table, hands moving with an unexpected nimbleness, as Sebastian realised that he was witnessing the dread horror of fleshcraft.

Hide stretched over muscle made clay, sagging and bending as the Nagloper rearranged that which had once been a man - now, it was nothing more than a wretch with atrophied limbs and a face welded shut with its own skin. Despite the undeniable grimness, Sebastian found something fascinating in the monster's movements, his dedication to his odd craft unmistakable. It was not the mauling carnage of which he had heard- it was more of a deft manipulation, intensely focused enough to perhaps even be described as purposeful. Such intriguing abilities, obviously honed over many lifetimes within this strange pit - it baffled LaCroix that such power would be squandered upon a solitary existence in the depths of the wilderness.

A voice rang out, and his every muscle froze.

"You come here uninvited."

His voice was a deep growl, wrung through rotted vocal cords and a mouth obviously more suited to tearing beings limb from limb than chatting with them. He carried an accent that was old and implacable, but LaCroix was surprised to hear him speak his own tongue with clarity - more so than most he had encountered. The creature turned to him, his eyes an unusually cold shade of red, staring out from the deep shadows of his brow with a ghastly glow. His face was gaunt yet solid in its sharp lines and cragged strength, his features carelessly smearing the line between man, corpse and demon.

LaCroix set his shoulders, fixed his gaze, and gave a faint, polite smile. Though it was true that his own capabilities were not quite so striking as the shaping of bodies and twisting of bone, he had faith in his vitae to ply the beast's will for him, if only for a moment.

"I have. My sincerest apologies." He forced himself to look into those unblinking eyes. "And I suppose you are to torture me most terribly for it?"

The horror studied him for a moment, eyes tracking his every twitch like a hawk as he stood upon his ground. LaCroix did not bark commands as he might at a weak-willed fledgling or kine - rather, he softly conveyed that the suggestions being whispered into his mind were born of his own volition. 

Eventually, the creature spoke again. "Do you wish to take his place upon my table?" he asked, claws flicking towards the mess he had been reshaping moments before.

"I... think not."

"Then leave."

That harsh voice held a barely-restrained threat, but LaCroix's nerves were untouched by it - on the contrary, his smirk grew, for he already had the beast offering a compromise. It always went one of two ways with these types , the lone wolves of the undead long removed from society and humanity. Either well-placed words would wash over them like water over stone, or their ears would be easily gripped, having long forgotten their own innate ability to be manipulated.

"I have heard so very much of you, the horror that haunts this forest. Something of a legend, almost."

"That does not concern me." 

"Perhaps it should. Many wish you destroyed, you know."

"Cattle bray. Children play their Jyhad. Few, if any, will act." As the Nagloper closed some of the distance between them, LaCroix had to tilt his head upwards to continue to meet the mighty figure's gaze. His eyes narrowed as the accusatory edge to his tone sharpened. "What concerns me is that my territory _remains in solitude_." 

"And I reiterate my sincerest apologies for the intrusion." LaCroix glanced off to the side with semi-faux timidity. "I was sent here to kill you."

He understood the risks of saying such words, but he had the feeling that this thing would be receptive to a pretense of honesty. The Nagloper looked at him in silence for several long moments before his mouth cracked open to reveal long rows of cruel, curved fangs, and a dry, rasping sort of noise tore from deep within his throat. LaCroix realised, after a pause, that he was laughing.

"You are not the first," he told him, "though you are the smallest." The Nagloper's head turned towards one of the many twisted bodies lining his walls. LaCroix followed his gaze, and saw that he had not noticed, before, the pallor to the twisted flesh, the bestial slit to one of its glazed eyes as it stared from beneath a flap of skin, that betrayed it as vampiric in nature. He looked at the dismal fate for only a fleeting second.

The Nagloper looked down at his much slighter stature in grave disdain, the implications of his words hanging heavily in the air. There were few things that LaCroix detested more than being underestimated, but he had also come understand the invaluable string it was to his bow - it rendered minds lax and unguarded, opened their vulnerabilities. He widened his eyes, opened his mouth a fraction, pushed his eyebrows upwards as if in dawning, dreadful realisation. "Ah... the image is rather ridiculous, isn't it?" he said, stringing his voice to a near-whisper.

"Indeed. Flee, back to whomever owns you this night. Leave me without your chatter."

The Nagloper turned his head back to his hideous work, his attention slipping from LaCroix. Now would be the perfect moment - with the beast in close quarters and off his guard, an unobstructed exit within reach - yet his fingers only skimmed hesitantly over the volatile weaponry concealed beneath his coat. As he watched those claws dipping in and out of glistening tissue, Sebastian's teeth worried at his lip - a graceless habit from life he had not quite shaken yet, emerging as his attention was caught.

"Your mercy is unexpected," he said, as though he had not been pushing his disciplines to their limits for it, "and you have my gratitude."

The Nagloper glanced his way once more, discomfort pulling at his rigid face before he bared those daggerlike fangs. "_Do not expect it twice._"

The words were rumbled in a growl deeper than the thunder splitting the skies, but already, LaCroix heard how they rung unsure and hollow beneath their veneer of brutality.

"Of course not," he said quietly. "Farewell, then, or perhaps, until next time... should chance decide we meet again."  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bonus art:  
[here](https://m.imgur.com/a/iP8OqxN) is how i was imagining (semi)hair-down sheriff in the flashback ^_^  
[now with some colour :p](https://imgur.com/a/i9RSJU4)


	2. Chapter 2

Terror unmistakable lurked upon the shores of Los Angeles, if one knew how to perceive it. It lay in the arrhythmic hiss of the waves, the sands that burned chillingly to the touch, the slow and sticky quality to the air. In his youth, those around him had revered such wisdom, treasured the seeing of that which was unseen. But then, he had seen vision fade with the tides of time, as earthly and unearthly beings alike dismissed augured ill as a mere fleeting sensation, and omens lay abandoned as nothing more than superstition.

Such cultural shifts proved unfortunate for some, such as the unsuspecting young man writhing beneath the harsh grip of the Nagloper's jaw. His neck spasmed around his teeth as the final vestiges of life left his body, staining thick and dark upon the sand. His fangs tore the kine's skin like paper as he bit at the gushing, ragged holes, swallowing the blood in ravenous fervour before it grew stale with the taste of death.

It was the third kine he had consumed that night. The Nagloper had always needed blood in great flowing quantities to sustain his power-laden body, and he had never been able to fully numb his hunger - but recently, it had been _gnawing_ at him, pressing incessantly at the back of his mind. His age, perhaps, or his beast. Whatever it was, it drove him to bite and tear - his innate sadism had long been replaced by the need to serve his Master efficiently, but on recent nights, he had been losing himself in the hunt as though he were a fledgling once more.

When the veins ran dry, the Nagloper brought the carcass to the water, so that the sea may take it to moulder softly beneath its waves. The Camarilla's Masquerade meant less to his Master now, but neither of them wanted the attention that a trail of corpses might catch. Afterwards, he ran his hands through the currents, washing saltwater over his face to cleanse himself of lesser blood, for he knew that Sebastian found the odour distasteful.

As the hunger quieted, the unease returned - the sense of hopeless emptiness that festered whenever he was parted from Sebastian. That, too, had grown, though for reasons much clearer than any other changes of the modern nights; it was because of the picture carved into his mind, of his Master with a body weak and broken, just barely scraped from the clutches of flame and ruin. He shook his head, banishing the memory and the shudders it sent throughout his body, as he readied himself to take flight and return to their haven - he froze as a brisk gust of wind whipped up the coastline. The grains that brushed past his face carried a sharp and familiar scent - one that was uniquely devoid of life, but not energy. His head snapped in its direction, revealing that he was not the only predator here.

He saw wide eyes peering from a pallid face, mouth gaping to reveal only blunted, misshapen lumps of fangs. The Nagloper had kept his senses fatally sharp to avoid his fellow undead, but this creature's weak and impure aura barely rippled his auspex. Her gaze held a confused, pleading incomprehension as he drew himself to his full height and strode closer. She cried out and backed away, making some attempt to flee but stumbling in blind terror; he understood, then, that it was not only a lost neonate before him - it was a _thinblood_.

Noisy, foolish child - even had he not been meaning to keep his presence discrete, he would have destroyed her if only to quell his utter disgust at her existence, at the obscene and careless reproduction birthing swathes of weaklings unfit for undeath. With an extension of his hand and only a minute prick of his full power sparking from his fingertips, her screams quieted, and her ashes carried upon the seabreeze.

As she died, the Nagloper felt it once more - the piercing stab of unseen terror, only growing as he looked upon her bones, slowly slipping away to the black ocean just as the kine had. A storm gathered on the horizon, lashing the waters into distant waves that cracked against his calves, shrouding the sky in billowing clouds. Through them, he glimpsed it - only for a moment, only faintly, but rooting his body to the spot nonetheless. A red blot peering down, a stain upon the night sky.

He needed to return to Sebastian.

His body shifted quickly under vicissitude, bones reforming and skin repurposed to carry his weight up into the night air. The buzzing, fractured lights of the city waned as the wind beat beneath his heavy wings, the urban sprawl rendered insignificant to his eye. He glided through darkened districts, through well- practised routes where the sweep of his shadow would go unnoticed, despite the nagging temptation to hurry his way back to his Master.

Forty nights or so had passed since the explosion, and every single one, he wondered if he ought have simply destroyed that key - he should have _known_, and it had been unforgivably careless of him to risk his Master's life. Sebastian's role had shifted significantly; after the Tremere had scavenged the embers of his once-Prince, a retreat into solitude had been deemed necessary. Sebastian was biding his time, confining himself to only his most trusted contacts and guarded haven, sending out proxy after proxy whilst he paced inside, seeing daggers in the shadows. It did not suit him to be trapped so, and he detested to see how he suffered for it, but his hope remained set upon Los Angeles. 

The Nagloper could not help but wonder, as the city marched onwards without them, whether Sebastian had faded into obscurity rather than loathing. It was not his place to question his Master's motives, and so he cursed himself for the voice inside whispering that this obscurity brought _safety_, and an unperturbed existence at last. 

Sebastian's blood called to him as he dipped lower, towards the highest ledge of a subdued building, a low tower bathed in gloom rather than glare. He shed his flesh to return to his preferred form, landing before a darkened window with latches his claws could just about hook into. As the Nagloper slipped inside, the comforting warmth filled his lungs like a living breath - the warmth of being near his Master once more.  
  
The room, a place smaller and plainer than Sebastian's other havens, was illuminated only by the sullen light of a screen, belonging to the modern device that his Master spent most of his time in front of these nights. All was cast in a sickly gleam as his eyes darted about the room, for any trace of Sebastian, his body wound tightly with the need to look upon his face again.

"You were gone for some time," came a low voice, a soft bitterness to its undertone.

Sebastian stood in the doorway towards the bedroom, fixing him with an unblinking glower and fingers grasping harshly against his folded arms. His eyes were heavy, as they had been ever since that dreadful night, and he had long abandoned his full attire - his necktie hung loose around a dress shirt as crumpled as the trousers he had been wearing for many nights now, his frame lither without his heavy coat. The Nagloper cast his eyes downwards immediately, so as not to meet his obvious displeasure with defiance; any thoughts about what he had witnessed fled, replaced by deep remorse under his Master's accusatory eye. He had not thought his feeding had taken overlong, but evidently, he had misjudged. A hand of thin, pale fingers reached to tip his jaw upwards, so that Sebastian could scrutinise his features.

"If you wish to simply leave and be done with me," he said, voice gentle yet hissing, lip twitching to a sneer, "you may. You understand that, don't you?"

The only relief he had from the crushing gaze of his Master, the guilt that cut into his chest, was that his words were not true. He could not leave, and if his usefulness was exhausted, then he would be disposed of. He took a shameful comfort in the fact that choice was not his burden.

"No?" said Sebastian finally, stroking a thumb over his jawline. His hand crept around to the base of his skull, tugging him downwards. He allowed himself to be pulled, positioned, any uncertainty muted beneath an unrivalled trust.

He remained completely still as his Master pressed his lips to his own.

The tenderness of the sensation was the first thing that struck his mind - soft and delicate, the skin of his lips terribly breakable. He would change that, if he asked; gift Sebastian with the unwavering strength his body ought possess, reform him however he desired. However, Sebastian was, of course, reluctant to allow anything so grotesque as his disciplines to sully his skin.

The Nagloper did not encumber himself with sentiments that were of no use to him, so the few that he did feel were burning, feverish in their intensity. Little blazed as brightly as the love he harboured for his Master, love returned so generously in body and blood. It flooded him with impelling urges - the urge to grab his hair, to wrench him into his arms, for teeth to tear at skin until he devoured or was devoured. Body or soul, he would give it willingly, in return for some way that they could become a part of each other. But he only stood still, unable to match the unfamiliarly human motions of Sebastian's lips but relishing them still.

When Sebastian pulled away, he still looked at him with that searching judgement. "Your taste is foul," he told him. "Do not feed from dregs again."

He nodded numbly. Sebastian's grip was light around his wrist, his fingers too small encircle it completely, but it pulled him easily enough, guiding him to sit upon the sofa. The Ventrue knelt beside him and trailed his hand up his leg, faint arousal radiating from him in sudden waves to send a heat through the Nagloper's body in return. This side of their bond was not new, and he had fought hard to cling to one lingering shred of humanity if it let him share such intimacy with his Master - however, there was something strange in how Sebastian's gaze caught his own and lingered, and in the decidedly less mechanically distant motions of his body.

Sebastian's slender yet shapely thighs bracketed his own, guiding his claw to the button of his shirt. He awaited commands, but Sebastian only stared at him with dim expectation. "Continue," he muttered, once a moment had passed.

He took great care to fray neither cloth nor skin as he slowly uncovered him, revealing his pale stomach taut with anticipation. He was caught by the soft lines of his abdominals, drifting to the sides where his muscles and ribs became one and how it expanded with false breath as his nails traced their surface. He had traced them many times before, but always with a firm hand leading him along a strict path - but now, Sebastian's eyes fluttered closed, his head tilted backwards, throat bared in submission. 

Sebastian gasped as he moved his hand downwards, withdrawing his cock and sliding the pads of his fingers over its firming skin, using the hidden softer spots that lacked his body's typical harshness. The Ventrue's tongue glistened as his lips parted and a fang glinted in the faint light, rushing him with memories of the transcendent pleasure of Sebastian feeding upon him. Perhaps, he pondered, _that_ was the cause of the delicate tilt of his neck, of how his hands grasped at the Nagloper's shoulder with needy affection - but he ceased his thoughts quickly. An action taken on the barely lucid edge of torpor meant nothing, and to take advantage of it would be unthinkable.

Sebastian's next sigh was contented, the smell of sex becoming much sharper as slickness began to seep over his fingers. He allowed his desires to dominate him for only a moment, shifting his Master off to instead recline beneath him. When he remembered himself, he blanched at his own presumptuous actions - but Sebastian only lay with his eyes closed and his hips shifting languidly in half-invitation. He allowed himself to kneel and press his mouth to his Master's flushed cock, swallowing the taste of him greedily as he watched him cry out his pleasure. He wrung as many of those sounds as he could from him with a mouth that was rarely permitted to touch his Master so, extending his tongue past any natural limits to engulf him completely. As his thumb stroked over the joining of hip and thigh, Sebastian opened his eyes to peer down at him. 

The vibrant, energetic glint in his eyes reminded him of their early nights together. He'd watched Sebastian change, over the years, from an impassioned and capricious neonate - prone to fits of joy and rage with ambitions and whims aligned as one - into something more covertly deadly. But flashes still showed, sometimes, providing a disconcerting reminder that his Master was still so young. It awakened another love - something different, protective, almost oddly paternal... something that no thrall had any place feeling.  
  
The Nagloper's rough tongue moved further down his Master's shaft, curling around to press at his sack. The keen from Sebastian was glorious as he began to thrust upwards, into his mouth. His claws moved to support his hips as he ran his tongue at a firm but soothing pace. Withdrawing his mouth, he moved downwards, laving over his skin until he could lap at his entrance. Sebastian's legs hooked over his shoulders until he was bent nearly in two, looking up as he loomed down, and still, no words came. Only a frenzied desperation in his eyes and harsh gasps between his lips.

He dove his tongue in to taste Sebastian, to feel him writhe and to hear him moan. His hands grasped at him once more, not only supporting his weight but roaming wherever they pleased, feeling how Sebastian shuddered as his cock grew yet wetter between his fingers. When he felt the Ventrue's thighs begin to quiver with a familiar mounting tension, he moved back upwards, swallowing his cock through his orgasm. As he thrust his hips into the other man's face, Sebastian did not give his usual low cry - his voice weakened to a broken noise, fading quickly to silence. The Nagloper swallowed all that he was given. Sebastian slumped backwards into the cushions, detangling their bodies and drifting his gaze to the kneeling man. 

He looked upon him, for only a second, with something that might have been reverence - that might have been the Nagloper's own undying adoration reflected in his Master's face. But it passed too quickly for him to tell, displaced by something much colder.

"I don't have the time to _attend to you_, if that is what you are waiting for," he snapped, fingers dancing over his buttons half-heartedly. The Nagloper recoiled at the suggestion that he would presume such things - he had only been unsure if his task was finished. Arousal still murmured in his veins as he stood, though he did know better than to physically manifest it without request.  
Sebastian let out a deep sigh, massaging his fingers to his temple. "My apologies, I..."

He froze. An apology was not something that had any place upon his Master's tongue. He gazed down at Sebastian's form in its languor, sickness in his gut as he tried to reconcile himself with the terrible, unthinkable concept that had been creeping unbidden in his mind for some time, the one that utterly mangled his world - the concept of fallibility.

"One of my resources has severed all ties with me. He was my last point of contact with the Nosferatu. Our terms were always... tenuous, but now it seems the _Prince's_ stability is worth much more than anything I can afford." His voice was hollow as he gave a bitter, pained smile. "All of my work will be undone before long."

The Nagloper hovered uncertainly before him. He did not have a face that could give solace, or a voice that could ease pain. Sebastian's knuckles tightened as one hand grasped at his shirt.

"I don't know how much longer I can stumble in the dark like this." Sebastian's eyes narrowed. "It all seems rather pointless, doesn't it? This manoeuvering, it... it has brought me _nothing_. This all needs to change, I can feel it."

He nodded in awed understanding. The surge of relief was great enough that his mouth opened to speak - of the redness in the sky, of the thinbloods, of the storms, of the weight of a gaze upon all of them that he knew was on the verge of crashing down. How had he not noticed it before - the fear lurking behind Sebastian's eyes?

"No more of this," announced the Ventrue. "I shall kill the Prince."

The Nagloper closed his mouth, and his words stilled.

"Crimes and causes can be fabricated later, but for now, a show of force would deliver me from this pitiful position, wouldn't it?"

He wanted to believe him, but for the first time in many years, he struggled. He struggled to see anything but more meaningless drops in an ocean of vitae, spilt in vain as the uncaring tide rose higher - it was outshone only by that recurring vision of Sebastian on the brink of final death, bathed in distant fire. His fingers twitched to reach out for his Master, to smooth the resentment from his brow and _show him_. 

But tenacious confidence had returned to Sebastian's countenance, as it always did, fogging the doubt in his mind. He looked downwards, and awaited dismissal with his gaze fixed upon the floor.  


\---  
  
  
The Ventrue had returned.

His footsteps were well-distinguished from the other occasional intruder, for his strides were loud in their boldness, and his brashly assured presence tore noisily through the air.

He had been making visits on occasion, ever since he had announced himself one hundred and three nights ago - and it seemed he had a gift for timing it whenever the Nagloper was in the middle of something requiring no distraction. He brought him allegedly powerful items of interest - useless baubles, mostly, with the odd tool he could just about make use of - and offered him the precious secrets of people whose names he did not know. A little bird come to sing at him, to bring trinkets into his nest, trying to win his favour with shameless blatancy, as was the nature of such clans and creatures. He was small, waxen pallid, _weak_ in body despite the fool's strength behind his words. Yet he found himself growing tired of trying to permanently frighten him away, and so the strange dance of curiosity, bemusement and annoyance continued.

Each time he saw the back of his finely embroidered coat, the Nagloper vowed that if he visited once more, he would end this - make him scream and warp beneath his fingers as he was remade into something more _useful_. But then, as he was greeted with the gleam of his bright eyes through the sombre haze of the forest, such thoughts slipped away.

"Why do you still come here?" he asked finally, the fifth time that he encroached upon his haven. He set down his half-finished creation, and folded his arms at the now-familiar sight of the man lingering at his gates.

"Because you are rather more fascinating than those elsewhere. Am I not allowed my interest?"

He could not remember the last time that anyone had approached him with something other than terror or revulsion. Yet even stood within the Nagloper's lethal reach, the smaller vampire emitted nothing but an arrogant fascination. A smirk always played on his lips after he laid out his pretty and empty words, and this night, it was highlighted beneath a swollen moon and clear skies. The copper-tinged gold of his hair, too, caught an ethereal gleam.

"Your curiosity is an ugly trait," he growled in response.

"So I have been told." His smirk did not waver, but his eyes narrowed into a piercing, probing leer. "However, since you were kind enough to ask, I did have... something on the mind. I come with a purpose this time, I assure you."

The Ventrue waited with a pleased grin - this was the part where his ghouls and servants would leap and plead to hear his words, he would wager, but the Nagloper would do no such thing. However, there was a... hook to his words that stopped him from hushing him just yet.

"I've grown rather weary of a certain Magaji... specifically, the one who would have his domain rid of you. I am quite sure that his power is pale next to yours, should you meet him on equal footing. A solution lies within our grasp."

"I have spoken of this already. Such barren words mean nothing to me."

"Yes, yes, you've made your proud apoliticism very clear indeed. However, you are aware, aren't you, of the purge he is planning? Faith has been wavering in his abilities recently, and how better to consolidate a reign than the cleansing of undesirables?" The Ventrue cocked an eyebrow. "Foreign invaders and reviled beasts alike."

In his mind, he knew that there was no evidence for these claims, and that his strength was so great that it mattered little. However, his chest prickled coldly with doubt, and the more he looked into the man's enrapturing eyes, the more heavy the truth to his words seemed.

"I have resources and information that would make preventing an unwanted outcome effortless, and I need only the might to set the wheel in motion."

A second passed where the Nagloper was unsure of why he restrained himself. The shifts of the domain _did_ wash his way on occasion. Perhaps a fraction of power would maintain the isolation that he strove towards, and fortune was smiling upon him that this enigma was offering it on an open palm.

The shadows and moonlight shifted as the Ventrue approached, his skin no longer sickly pallid but _glowing_, his presence carrying such a devastating significance. How did he seem to hold such power, this little creature- what was it that seemed to radiate from his very being? He could not look away from the incandescent silver of his eyes, his gripping beauty and dreadful gaze, human fear and desire awakening from where they had lain long dead. He had always thought himself cursed for such desires in life, but as they returned in the abomination of undeath, he no longer saw any reason to not act upon them - they flooded his veins without mercy. He realised suddenly what a fool he had been, overconfident, blind to the danger before him-

"I have but one condition," said the fiend clad in finery and silvered tongues.

His legs were uselessly, deathly stiff, and so he could not back away. "_Speak_," he snarled, though part of him hoped against all hope that he would never hear that voice again.

The Ventrue's lips twisted back into a smile - sweeter, this time, far more graceful than his simpers. His fingers brushed down his neck, cravat pulled aside to reveal slender, alluring tendons and an unblemished throat. "I need some way to guarantee my own safety. Unfortunate, I know. Must I say it?" he asked in a dulcet tone.

If he marred that fair face, melted his eyes and ripped out his tongue, then this would all pass. He swung a mighty arm to grab him, to mutilate him so that his gaze and words would not grasp his very soul. The man was hauled into his grip easily, his frame close to weightless as he flung him upon a stone slab, viscera crushed beneath his back.

"_Yes_," he cried, rapturous in domination, "do it _now_, take all that I have to give you-"

Their bodies pressed closely as he lunged, his maw opening before his claws could rend, penetrating deep into his throat. The flowing vitae was lustrous, pouring an intense invigoration down his throat as fingers stroked sedately over his hair. The Ventrue's leg wrapped around his waist as he shivered and moaned, bodies tangled together whilst their blood was consummated upon the gristle. His last refuge lay in the fleeting thought of diablerie, but it vanished as he was effortlessly pushed away, left with nothing but a heady fullness.

"Good. You will do well," gasped the Ventrue, splendidly dishevelled. 

He nodded his eager agreement before he could think to stop himself.


	3. Chapter 3

LaCroix had forgotten the stench of Los Angeles.

He had rarely graced its boulevards with his presence over the past three months, and now, as he marched down a suitably vandalised side street, the rot was crisp and fresh in his mind. His lips twinged at the raucous din of voices scattered with the occasional gunshot, the wafting of cigarette smoke and mildew, the vagrants who may have been sleeping or dead. He tucked his coat a fraction tighter about his person, as if it would prevent the surrounding filth from seeping in.

What little word he had caught in his seclusion had been that the city was rising, apparently. That Strauss ruled with a firm yet fair hand, that the Anarchs were dispersing under his negotiations, and that domains were settling beneath a stable Camarilla. What an _opportunist_, to leap at the path LaCroix had cleared after _he_ had all but annihilated the Sabbat and Kuei Jin. But quite apart from that, down here the city looked just as putrid as he'd left it, to say nothing of the oppressive tension in the atmosphere. _Rising, indeed._

He turned a sharp corner, down the dead-end alleyway behind an agreed upon building. Tucked away in the shadows, LaCroix stood, and he waited.

It had taken dogged persistence to arrange this meeting with a few allegedly unsatisfied with the new Prince, displaying a passing interest in uniting under some banner to end his reign. In person, _to avoid tracking_, they had whispered. He was not convinced. Though he had taken precautions to keep his veil of anonymity, he suspected that it had slipped, and that this meeting would be as much a trap as the last one. 

He was unsure of whether he was truly Anathema, or whether his murder was simply a trophy that many of the aspiring powerful thought would look pleasant upon their mantle. It did not matter - not when a quick glance upwards revealed a lurking shadow perched upon the rain-streaked building ledge and the glow of two familiar red eyes watching him with rapt loyalty.

His eyes narrowed as he caught sight of them - three figures silhouetted against the rancid streetlights as they turned his way. He had been told they would be two in number. A woman with with an overbearing sneer, a man whose body hulked with power he was obviously new to wielding, and a lean man with a nervous disposition - they were the kind of blatant fledglings that, not so long ago, he would not have stooped to acknowledge. He drew himself up regardless, clinging to the hope that something fruitful could come of this meeting. But as they came close, he saw their coldly searching eyes, the recognition flicking through them. Then, a smirk, quick words and a nod, the gleam of a pistol and unnatural energy crackling through the air as the coterie confirmed their prey, and readied themselves to slaughter it.

For God's sake, why was every Kindred in this city so very set upon wasting his time?

He stepped back at the crack of a gunshot, missing his body so greatly that he had more reason to fear the ricochet. With a crash loud enough to rival the gun, his Laibon dropped before him and stood to make a fearsome blockade indeed. He could almost chuckle at the panicked cries suddenly filling the alleyway, at the gun clattering to the ground in shock.

It took only a grand, sweeping motion of one arm to reduce two of them to dust, leaving only the smallest to tremble before the Nagloper's might. LaCroix was taken by the sight - the pleasure of watching enemies cower and crumble never changed. His beast grabbed the survivor, rending muscle and innards alike with an upwards rake, enough to painfully debilitate him, but not enough to destroy him before staking, capture and interrogation, as discussed. He towered over him, a hand wrapped around the boy's throat, until-

The Nagloper faltered, claws twitching. His knees buckled, and LaCroix glimpsed the stake protruding from his chest, before his behemoth weight crashed to the ground.

And over him stood the other Kindred, a desperately pleased glint in his eye at his own stroke of grotesque luck.

It was easy, sometimes, for LaCroix to forget that he was a monster, after several lifetimes of fitted suits and fine blood sipped from wineglasses, with most of the deaths littering his path dealt with far from his sight. However, such did not change the fact that monstrosity was the inescapable truth behind every Kindred's existence, and it was a truth that he remembered well as this idiot whelp stalked towards him, speaking in a weak and reedy voice. Perhaps he was taunting him, or threatening him, or offering some truce. LaCroix would not know. 

They had taken everything from him, _but they would not have this_.

He moved with a soaring thrill that carried him to easily grab the wounded man. LaCroix heard the rush of some discipline or another, felt a distant burning pain, but it all mattered little - the youth of the fledgling was betrayed in how pliant his body was, in the weakness of his skull as it cracked against the bricks. His pain-hazed eyes pleaded wordlessly as vitae began to flow, its current rushing thick and pungent down the alley wall.

He almost looked like another fledgling that he had known. 

LaCroix bit. Striking viperlike at his neck, he dug into his flesh, vitae filling his mouth and dragging him inwards. Its potency was thin compared to the vitae of his Nagloper, or even his Sire, yet it still held such profound intoxication. An icy, viscous energy flooded him as the neonate's limbs grew weak - he simply continued to gorge himself as he felt, somewhere deep inside, the other vampire beginning to wither.

He did not stop until ash filled his mouth, dry and scorching against a tongue sticky with blood.

As the other man burned away to dust, LaCroix staggered backwards with a gasp. His vision could not quite focus, and the stench of vitae was overwhelmingly strong, all around him and _within_ him. A dark blight churned in his veins as his rational mind returned and he slowly realised exactly what had happened.

It was done. He was tainted, marked with his sin, a single feral moment wrenching his humanity from his weakened grasp.

He supposed the tales of Amaranth's pleasure had not been inaccurate - there had been a sort of rush to it. Yet he had never heard of this filthy, _corrupt_ sensation that wormed up his throat and through his limbs. A thirst, persisting through his satiation, a sinister craving. Whatever new power he had stolen twitched restlessly within his shaking hands, unstable and foreign beneath his own skin. He supposed, too, that they were right to compare it to being embraced anew... only he had forgotten that half of the embrace was death.

He moved slowly, still somewhat numb with shock, to the Nagloper laying deep in death. The stake wrenched free beneath his fingers. As life gradually returned to the Laibon's face, there was a calm there that he had not seen before - not practised blankness or ferocious stoicism, but true tranquillity in his steady return from torpor. His eyes traced over the slew of blood staining LaCroix's clothes, until settling gently upon his face.

"There may be more. We ought leave," he said. His voice was soft, and he could not quite say why.  
  
\---  
  
Twisted fingers burned out to gnarled bones, clattering to the floor as the Magaji screamed, impaled through his chest upon a heavy sword. He had enough time to look at the young Kindred he had been using as a pawn for months, betrayed and disbelieving agony in his eyes before the rest of his body eroded to nothingness.

Fearsome waves beat the coasts of Assinie just outside the Elder's hut, and LaCroix took a moment to appreciate the calming sound, now that all within had been silenced. His eyes skimmed the elaborate curios that the leader had hoarded - some of them were interesting enough that he considered taking them for his own, but most were ugly things to be destroyed. With a dry crack, the Nagloper pulled his sword free from the corpse's ribcage.

"That went wonderfully, wouldn't you agree?" The floor was littered with bones and ash - there had been six Laibon in total, all powerful beings, all cowed beneath the Nagloper. "You perform well, with a little direction."

"They were weak," replied the other man simply.

"I imagine most are, to you. Perhaps, with me, you could bring many more of the _weak_ to their knees." 

The monster's eyes still glowed hauntingly under the half-light as he stared. However, LaCroix felt no shiver of fear as he approached, close enough to smell the ashes, and to see every sharp line in his monstrous visage. For he had come to know him well - the twitches of his brow, the tilts of his jaw; all had become his to understand. Moreover, as LaCroix pulled his sleeve up and extended his wrist, he saw with satisfaction how those eyes fixated upon the revealed skin with a reverential hunger. It was a look that suited his face - the face Sebastian found so oddly appealing that he was considering not even asking him to change it.

"My name is Sebastian LaCroix," he told him, "and when you go forth to massacre this dead man's followers and drive all who would oppose me from the streets, I want you to tell them that you do so because you serve under me."

He blinked at him, the silence hanging heavy between them. "And I-"

LaCroix raised a hand, silencing the other man.

"I don't care for your name, beast."

He knew such words were playing with fire, but with how perfectly he had exerted his control so far, he could not resist toying with his limits.

Something flared in his glare, bloodstained claws curling, but only for a moment. Then, his eyes became dull as he knelt. LaCroix smiled, murmuring his contentment as the Nagloper bit at his wrist. 

Even with this being the fourth time, the pleasure of the act had not faded.  
  
\---  
  
The lights of Los Angeles were more pleasant from the rooftop of a small, short building. They were not so distant and muddled as they became from a grand tower, but also not so ugly and overwhelming as from the streets. But had they all always been so bright, so glaringly, uncomfortably so? He stood next to the Nagloper that had whisked him away once again, to another remote spot where they could stay out of sight from anyone, and simply observe.

However pretty the lights were, he found for the first time that he struggled to mourn the loss of the city before him, cast beneath a sky tinted red and the moon a decaying shade of yellow. Perhaps it was because of the dead soul he felt clinging inside of him, the slithering power that still sat uncomfortably in his being. One building of the skyline lacked in any light, and stood as a ragged, skeletal spire; the remains of Venture Tower. Or perhaps, he thought, he did not mourn because the city had never truly been his to begin with.

He was already marred with black blood, so he did not pay mind to any further filth as he sat upon the edge of the building. The stiff leather of a trailing coat brushed his arm as his guardian stood beside him, and LaCroix knew without turning that he was being looked at.

"I have doomed myself," he stated quietly, with no further explanation. The elder vampire would know what he had done.

Only the distant wailing of sirens and roaring of the wind responded to his words. With a soft rustle, the Laibon sat beside him, though the distance between their bodies was definite and detached. His gaze rested upon him, an even weight as always.

"I will have excommunicated myself from the Camarilla with this, and for what?" he whispered, head shaking slightly, still not quiet believing it himself. "My every step forward has become two steps back, hasn't it?"

He saw the Nagloper do as he often did - his eyes narrowed, his lips opened only a minuscule fraction, all actions so small and quick that they were barely noticeable. Then, his face returned to blankness, and whatever was seething inside of him was forgotten, never to meet Sebastian's ears.

The coldness of Amaranth writhed within him once more, destroying his already frail control and igniting his frustration.

"Would you just _say it_?" 

The Nagloper balked, mouth silently open in a moment of consternation. "I apologise for having failed to-"

"Not that. Say that thing, that thing that you think when you look at me like that!" he said in fuming desperation. "You think this all a folly, don't you? All of my actions, destined to fail, and still you follow without complaint-!" He looked away quickly, back to the hectic sea of light, his jaw tight.

When he dared to glance back, he was not met with the expectant, distant stare - the Nagloper had, instead, closed his eyes. He opened them slowly, and they held something not quite definable... something somewhere between worship and pity. Sebastian froze as he began to speak, without immediate permission.

"I do not believe that you will ever conquer the Camarilla, and I cannot comprehend your desire to. I see few uses for the modicum of false power it would bring."

The words punched deeply into his gut. His immediate reaction was to tell him to vicissitude his own tongue out as punishment for such insolence, to ask how he could dare doubt him so... but he realised, then, that it was more from a sense of obligation to salvage his broken pride than any true desire to quiet him. On the contrary, he had spent so long dancing in half-truths that the words thrilled him.

"And what do _you_ propose?" he spat. "This is... all I am, what I was embraced for, to scrape power in such ways, from such people." He took a deep, shuddering breath as the words began to tangle in his mouth. "An existence I once thought noble has revealed itself as... _parasitic_. I am not like you."

"The Camarilla is young," replied the Nagloper. "It will pass before long."

"And I before it, most likely."

"I do not believe so. Not necessarily."

Sebastian laughed bitterly. "Of course you do not, that's how I've _made_ you. Had I not, you would have already ripped me in two."

The silence fell once more, but this time, the Nagloper did not hide the thoughtfulness of his stare. For a few moments, Sebastian thought the silence might have returned for good, all of whatever this was slipping away to memory, to then be forgotten within a few nights as plotting and commanding began once more. 

"Perhaps," acknowledged the Nagloper eventually. "You have indeed scorched my eyes from their sockets, and torn my voice from my throat. I accepted that such was my fate many nights ago."

Sebastian's words were utterly lost as he spoke in a calm, unaffected tone on the matter. He almost asked how much he must hate him for it, but he already knew the answer; he had rendered him incapable of such feelings.

"But that is not to say that I am completely blinded," he continued.

LaCroix blinked. "What do you mean?"

"That I have seen enough to convince me that this is not the path we should walk. Do you see it - the red star in the sky?" He looked out, past the city, to the skies far above.

There was, indeed, a speck of scarlet, though it existed only in uncertain glimpses, flickering through the clouds. "I... I am not sure," he admitted.

"And I, neither. I feel Cagn's breath across me, but then, perhaps it is the wind. I do not claim to know. Regardless, I know that there are other kinds of power to pursue." The few inches he shifted closer to Sebastian eased, somewhat, the buzzing through his veins. "You feel it inside you, don't you? When you consumed that neonate. That sort of power is a worthy calling, and one that you once chased with ferocity."

Sebastian's lips twitched in disgust. "What I feel is abhorrence."

"To be expected, the first time. You will grow accustomed if you allow yourself to. If you allow yourself to shed all arbitrary shackles."

A heavy dread weighed down his shoulders at the prospect, but the new and strange hunger lingered still. He knotted his hands together, grasping his knuckles tightly, unsure of what swirling void he perched on the edge of.

The Nagloper's voice softened, as much as it could, into a solemn growl. "If you were to drink of me, and consume me, my power would carry you easily. Or, if I were to consume you, I could allow you to take my body as your own."

Sebastian flinched, shocked at the words. He should not have been - it was only the natural extension of the roles they both played, the things that they were, and he had even considered doing as much in the past. But now the thought was unbearably isolating, and he shuddered to think of a world without this presence beside him.

"No. No, that is not what I desire." He stood, so that he may return to his haven for one final time before he turned his back on Los Angeles forever. He watched the Nagloper do the same, observed how he surveyed the city with a careful eye, predatory yet noble. Something not quite human or creature - Sebastian had seen nothing but a mere beast for so many years, as it was the unmistakable truth through the lens of humanity. But now his lens was slipping, and cracked. 

"What I ask of you next, you may refuse."

The Nagloper peered down at him.

"I wish for your name."

The Nagloper looked away from him, for a time, head tilted downwards, eyes lidded as if in hazy reminiscence. As the quiet stretched on, he had thought the other man had taken the choice to refuse, and Sebastian accepted as such, until-

"Kouassi Yao."

Sebastian smiled thinly. The syllables meant nothing to him, of course, untied as they were to this man who had spent so many years nameless.

But perhaps that could change in time, as all had, and all would. Kouassi offered his hand and Sebastian grasped it tightly in both of his, unsure of his destination but prepared to be led away.

**Author's Note:**

> this kinda ended up longer and different than it started out... anyways thanks for reading! :)


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